JBuilder
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JBuilder is a Java IDE from Borland. It has won several consecutive awards as the most powerful IDE for professional Java Programmming.
Borland sells a variety of versions of JBuilder. There is even a free limited version for beginners of the Java language.
From JBuilder ver. 2, with a few modifications, is used as the internal engine of Oracle's own JDeveloper for their database.
JBuilder's main competitors are the products from IBM (Eclipse), JetBrains (IntelliJ IDEA), BEA Systems and NetBeans.
History
JBuilder was conceived within Borland around 1996, by the people fascinated with the new language, Java. Joe Nuxoll was one of such people; later Blake Stone joined the team, and he had eventually become JBuilder's architect. The first version of JBuilder was based on Delphi. Version 2 was written fully in Java, and this platform, revolutionary for those days, 1997, permitted users to add "add-ons" and so customize the IDE for their purposes. As a result, Oracle was able to build their JDeveloper based on JBuilder. A community formed around the new product, adding more and more new plugins. One of such plugins, Together plugin for JBuilder finally evolved into a separate, standalone product - but the company, TogetherSoft, was eventually acquired by Borland.
JBuilder 2 was extremely slow, though, and not very stable. By version 3 Tony de la Lama took control over the production process - and since then, until Tony de la Lama removal in 2001, Borland produced a version of JBuilder every 6 months, with quality ever improving and features being added. Tony de la Lama declared war to competing products - targeting VisualCafe, then WebGain, and Borland won these wars.
One of the lines of intensive development was J2EE. JBuilder is now able to work with multiple application servers, and is a very good tool for developing web services and JSPs. Another line, where developers initiative did not always find understanding in the management, is XP - refactoring, unit tests, etc. Although JBuilder is relatively good with it, much more could be done here. Another feature is integration with Borland's profiler, Optimizeit.
Now the future of JBuilder is rather unclear. Eclipse seems to be taking over, and we may see in the nearest future Borland moving its JBuilder to Eclipse platform.
External links
- Borland's JBuilder site (http://www.borland.com/jbuilder/)de:JBuilder